Praying for genuine spiritual reformation in Nairobi
by preaching the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27)
Precept upon precept, line upon line...
Isaiah 28:10, 13

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Corporate Prayer

Passage Joshua 7:6-9

Then
Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the
LORD until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their
heads. And Joshua said, “Alas, O Lord GOD, why have you brought this people
over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy
us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan! O Lord, what can
I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies! For the
Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will
surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your
great name?”

We must never think that our safety is the glory of
God. God’s glory is our security and when we dishonor God we leave ourselves
with this security. In this case we have a case of breaking faith with God and
so facing divine wrath. When we think that we can far from God and still enjoy
His blessings we lose faith. When we think God will reward disobedience, we
must come to this passage.

But this passage is the most telling about how we
are to come to God in prayer. But what is prayer? Prayer is the immense
privilege of communing with God. It is a close personal worship, praise and
thanksgiving to the Lord. It is a display of dependence on God, for things
pertaining to this life as well as for the one to come. Prayer also discloses
sins before God, self-accusing looking for God to show mercy and pardon
abundantly. Prayer is also unburdening other people’s problems to God.

There was a double tragedy –

1.The immediate problem was the loss of
36 men by a very tiny community called Ai.

2.The compound problem was that God had
withdrawn His support to these people. Clearly God’s invincible and omnipotent
hand was not with them, when they were routed by a little city of Ai.

What lessons do we learn here especially on corporate
prayer?

1.Corporate prayer is to be led by the leaders

Prayer was done by the leaders of Israel led by
Joshua, on behalf of the people and so they pray in first person plural – “we…us” and not “I…”. The elders were
representatives of each of the tribes of Israel. We read that each of them, led
by Joshua spent the whole day with torn clothes, with ashes on their head, and
their heads on the ground, crying to the Lord. Talk about taking prayers seriously! Do we as your leaders take
prayers this seriously? Do we portray ourselves as men who take communing with
God as solemn? They rent their garments as an act and attitude of his not only
expressed an humbling of himself beneath the mighty hand of God, an unsparing
self judgment for his failure, but it also betokened a spirit of hope.[1] Doesn’t
this remind us of the prostration of our Lord in Gethsemane for our sins and
trespasses? How our Lord bore our burden of sin, and took the wrath for us?
Compare with Matthew 26:39

But it is for this reason that the church and any
other gathering of God’s people have to have a serious leader take up this
matter. Choice men have to lead in these
serious prayers! You notice that Joshua did not ask any of them to pray as
many people do these days – when the food is served by their wives they are so
quick to delegate the responsibility for their wives and children to “pray for
the food!” Such is unbecoming when we realize that prayers are serious moments
of communion with God and we should show leadership by praying in the most
reverent manner. Remember the New Testament command in 1Timothy 2:8 – “I
desire that in every place the men
ought to pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling…” This is a
NT command that we disregard when we delegate the privilege of prayer to
others.

In this story also is the failure of the leadership of Joshua: why did he need to send
more spies, especially when God had not said so? Why did Joshua listen to the
counsel of the spies on how he was to lead the people – taking orders from his
juniors, being led in stead of leading was wrong. But it was also a failure on
the people’s part giving counsel to Joshua and in him heeding it instead of respecting
and submitting to his leadership. If he had requested for their suggestions it
would have been reasonable, but he had not. Their suggestions were full of
over-confidence and divisive – only three thousand men will do the job, they
are tiny! The result is catastrophic. Moreover, Joshua was to take orders only
from the Lord. It is very interesting that this event is so closely related
with what had happened after the spies came from spying the land in Numbers
14:2-4 and 20:3-5. The only way to remedy this failure was to go to the Lord in
prayer. The Lord who appointed him a leader had to hear of his failure and give
him fresh orders. Then the Lord answered his prayer by saying, “Get up!

Do we offer a prayer like this to God or are we too
casual in prayer? Do we delight in being led by our pastors in prayers? Shall
we take corporate prayers seriously by having men who will seriously think
about what they will say to God before men?

2.Corporate prayer is to be done simply

In this passage we do not see Joshua employ
eloquence of speech or of decorum (he does not mention any of God’s promises).
We have here a very spontaneous unburdening of himself before God and in a
sense this may appear to be a very faulty prayer. It is a prayer of a desperate
leader, he is overwhelmed by the implications of being without God – and so
without hope.

How would God uphold His holy Name before the world
when His people had been defeated by such a small community of Ai? This in
effect meant that when other communities like the Canaanites among others in
the land heard of this unfortunately terrible incidence they will all come out
to annihilate this people, bring dishonor to the Lord who brought them from the
land of Egypt promising them land. In other words, God’s promise to the
forefathers to give them the land was at stake, so that His name could be
blasphemed among the heathens but also His own people could they continue to
trust Him? Clearly, Joshua expected God to give them victory always. This may
help us to understand his despair when he tore his clothes – it meant solemn mourning
in repentance. We commend them that their despair led them to immediately turn
to God and not to their own schemes. Prophet Joel (2:13) says that we rend the
hearts and not the garments but here is a company of who rends both the hearts
and the garments signifying that their hearts were already rent. Yet according
to John Calvin, something I also observe here is that,

Joshua oversteps
the bounds of moderation when he challenges God for having brought the people
of the desert, but he proceeds to much greater intemperance when, in opposition
to the divine promise and decree, he utters the turbulent wish, “Would that we
had never come out of the desert!” that was to abrogate the divine covenant
altogether. But as his object was to maintain and assert the divine glory, the
vehemence which otherwise might have justly provoked God was excused[2], since he turned to God rather than to men – God is indeed God, slow to
anger, full of compassion and abounding in love (Exodus 34:6,7).

Clearly we do not know how to pray. Our prayers are
mean and weak – were God to grant us our wishes we would forever sink in the
mire of our own perdition. But God is gracious – He answers our prayers far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according
to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ
Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21 ESV) Yet this is not a license to
overstep the boundaries set by God in His Word. We must always aim to pray
according to the will of God and for His will to be done (the content and
motive of our prayers must correspond). Only when the will of God is
accomplished in our lives can we experience the liberating delight in the glory
of God.

Our prayers have to be simple, humble and modest
because we cannot impress God by our eloquence. This is the antidote to
hypocritical prayers. No words will surprise God, no manner of praying will
take God aback and so we better approach God with in simplicity because He
knows our hearts. We are instructed not to pray like the Pharisees do – they
pray to be seen and heard by men, their reward is earthly from men – those
whose art is in composing prayers. Neither are we to pray like people of this
world for they multiply unnecessary words, like the Charismatics who are loud
and repetitive (Matthew 6:5-8)

3.Corporate
prayer must be most sincere and earnest

“Alas, O Lord GOD…O Lord, what can I say…?It was not because Joshua was short of words because he went on to pour
out his mind and heart to God. It was because he was at anguish of soul for
what had befallen the community that he was tasked to lead. More over in saying
this, he knew that what he was just about to say could be answered back with a
strong rebuke from God, since it was in a sense implying that God had not
thought of the honor of His name when he allowed this defeat on His people. He
justly complains that he is left without an answer. Now in his prayer he seeks
understanding from God and hence the question, “Why…?” Surely Joshua was not
seeking to find fault with God! The “Why
…?” question can only be explained as an utterance of supreme grief.[3] Yet in
this prayer we see him expressing bewilderment at what had happened to be God’s
breach of the covenant…because the problem at hand here is not a willful
disobedience (as it was in Numbers 14:13-19) but ignorance of a hidden
transgression.[4]

Joshua’s prayer contains a complaint in vv.8&9
that could have amounted to murmuring where it not directed to God. But it was
very different from the murmuring of the people on that occasion against
guidance of God, for it by no means arose from unbelief, but was simply the
bold language of faith wrestling with God in prayer, - faith which could not
comprehend the ways of the Lord, and involved the most urgent appeal to the
Lord to carry out His work in the same glorious manner in which it had been begun,
with firm conviction that God neither relinquish nor alter His purposes of
grace.[5]

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will
hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what
will you do for your great name?” From this
statement of prayer is Joshua’s main petition. This displays the heart of
Joshua’s prayer and this is what I call most sincere and earnest prayer. It
acknowledges that our hope is in yielding all glory to God as this is the
purpose for which He created us. Joshua was so concerned for the glory of God
to be manifestly glorious not just to him and the Israelites but also to the
people with which they were in contact. Our number priority in prayer must be to
seek the glory of God and in our lives. Obviously when we live like the world,
the Lord is not glorified.

It should cause us to tremble when we see how the
sin of Achan was imputed to the whole of the nation of Israel because God saw
them as an organic unity and so one man’s sin defiled the whole nation[6] just as
the Lord says that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. One man’s failure is
the failure of the whole church, the whole nation. The whole nation had acted
unfaithfully before God (v.1) thus all Israel suffer punishment for the sins of
one person. But Joshua did not know this, did he? He did not have Joshua 7:1
for his instruction. He did not have the same knowledge we have as read this
passage and so he prays with a sincere heart. He intensely pray without
knowledge.

Thankfully we have the Lord Jesus Christ who intercedes for us on the
right hand of God who is not finite in knowledge as we are. Yes, the One who
intercedes for us in not ignorant of the will of God, nor of the sins of men.
Christ Jesus the righteous does not depend on men to tell them that they have
coveted and lusted in the last week. He does not depend on our confession that
we have stolen or we have lied – he knows it all. And so He faithfully
represents us with both the sins we have admitted and the ones we haven’t. He
pleads for us not with words but by His merit and by His blood. For
surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.
(Hebrews 2:16 ESV)and we know that even Moses was faithful in all God's house as a
servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is
faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast
our confidence and our boasting in our hope. (Hebrews 3:5-6 ESV)

Christ has also given us the Holy Spirit who helps us in our weakness. For we do not know
what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26 ESV) Therefore we have all reasons to be prayerful as in the same way Adam’s
sins was imputed to us and we also sin daily so that the need for prayer is
even greater.

Then
Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the
LORD until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their
heads. And Joshua said, “Alas, O Lord GOD, why have you brought this people
over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy
us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan! O Lord, what can
I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies! For the
Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will
surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your
great name?”